The Borgias (8 page)
F
RANCESCO
G
UICCIARDINI
described Italy as ‘never having enjoyed such prosperity or known so favourable a situation as that in which it found itself in the years immediately before and after 1490.’ He continued:
The greatest peace and tranquillity reigned everywhere . . . Not only did Italy abound in inhabitants, merchandise and riches, but she was also highly renowned for the magnificence of many princes, for the splendour of so many most noble and beautiful cities, as the seat and majesty of religion, and flourishing with men most skilful in the administration of public affairs and most nobly talented in all disciplines and distinguished and industrious in all the arts. Nor was Italy lacking in military glory according to the standards of the time, and
adorned with so many gifts that she deservedly held a celebrated name and a reputation among all the nations.
Had Guicciardini described Italy as it was to become a few years later, during the pontificate of Alexander VI, he would have painted a less comforting picture. The quarrel between King Ferrante I of Naples and Ludovico Sforza of Milan was to have far wider political implications, involving France and Spain, each of which laid claim to Naples, and it now brought the threat of imminent war. For, in order to dispose of his enemy, Ludovico Sforza decided to suggest to King Charles VIII of France that he should invade Italy to assert his claim to Naples, as heir to the rights of the House of Anjou, which had been ousted from Naples by Ferrante I’s father, Alfonso of Aragon, some fifty years earlier.
Charles VIII’s belief that he was the rightful king of Naples had been ‘instilled in him from an early age, so that it was almost an innate instinct, and it had been nourished under the guidance of several close advisers,’ so Guicciardini said, and these men played on his vanity and his youthful inexperience, suggesting that, by enforcing his claim to the kingdom, he would ‘surpass the glory of his ancestors,’ and that, having taken Naples, it would be just a simple step to seize the Holy Land from the Turks.
On January 25, 1494, Ferrante I died, ‘without the light of grace, without the cross and without God,’ as Burchard stated. ‘On 21 January he visited the baths at Tripergole because he did not feel well’ – Tripergole, once famous for its sulphur baths, was buried after a volcanic eruption covered it with lava in 1538. On the following day Ferrante ‘returned to Naples and, on dismounting from his horse in the courtyard of Castel Nuovo, suffered a fainting fit;
three days later he died, without confession and without receiving the sacraments.’ This, so it seemed, was his own choice: ‘Although his confessor, a Franciscan friar, came into the bedroom and, standing before him, urged him to repent of his sins,’ Ferrante I refused to do so. ‘The friar, it was said, did not see a single sign of repentance from the King.’
Ferrante I died at the age of seventy, loathed by his subjects for the cruel way he had exercised his authority. There was, however, little talk of poison; many in Italy thought it likely he had died of misery at the prospect of seeing his kingdom seized by the powerful armies of Charles VIII, which were poised to leave France on their long march to conquer Naples.
Charles VIII was just twenty-four years old, and he was the ‘ugliest man’ that one observer had ever seen, ‘in all [his] days – tiny, deformed with the most appalling face that ever man had.’ The chronicler Philippe de Commynes added that ‘neither his treasury, nor his understanding, nor his preparations were sufficient for such an important enterprise as the conquest of Naples.’ Commynes believed he never said a word to anyone that could ‘in reason, cause displeasure.’ This unprepossessing but adventurous young monarch also had the most grandiose ideas; he was contemplating a march upon Naples not only to take possession of his ancestor’s throne but also to go on from there to conquer Jerusalem and, on the way, to reform the corrupt papacy of Alexander VI.
In Italy, where the forthcoming conflict now seemed inevitable, reactions varied. Ludovico Sforza promised his support, as did his father-in-law, the Duke of Ferrara, and his cousin Giovanni Sforza, husband of Lucrezia and Lord of Pesaro, who sent details of papal
troop deployments to Milan with the warning that ‘if any word of what I am doing is known, I will be in the greatest danger.’ The Republic of Venice remained neutral; Florence and the Papal States were both ill-equipped to fight a war; the Neapolitan army was a more formidable force than any other in Italy, but it had no hope of halting the French advance on its own.
The issue had become even more complicated for Alexander VI since Ferrante I’s death in January and the succession of Alfonso II as the new king. The pope now faced a stark choice – Naples was a papal fief and he had either to crown Alfonso II or to agree to the demands of Charles VIII to invest him as the rightful ruler.
Throughout March Alexander VI sought to placate both sides; he sent Charles VIII the papal rose, a mark of his favour, but when the ambassadors of Alfonso II arrived in Rome, their French counterparts made a point, as they had been ordered to do, of pointedly refusing to meet them. By Easter, which fell on March 30 that year, it was clear that Alexander VI had decided in favour of his alliance with Naples. At the Great Mass in St Peter’s on Easter Sunday, led by the pope in person, it was the cardinal of Naples who acted as his assistant. ‘The Pope gave communion to all the cardinal-deacons, except for the Cardinal of Valencia, who was absent,’ noted Johannes Burchard, using the title by which Cesare had chosen to be known in the college, and ‘afterwards the Lance of Christ was shown twice to the people and the Vernicle three times.’
On the Tuesday after Easter, Alexander VI went to the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva to hear Mass, which was celebrated by the bishop of Concordia. Cardinal Ascanio Sforza made a witty aside, recorded by Burchard, to the effect that ‘when the Pope is in
concord with the King of Naples, he asks the Bishop of Concordia to celebrate the mass; the Pope, who overheard this remark, asked me to tell Ascanio that his choice had not been premeditated but that it had been coincidence.’ Alexander VI then quipped, much to the discomfiture of his vice-chancellor, that ‘when there is peace between His Holiness and Ludovico Sforza,’ the pope would ‘have mass celebrated by the Bishop of Pace’ –
pace
is the Italian for peace and also the Latin name for the Spanish city of Badajoz.
The college of cardinals was deeply divided by the quarrel, Alexander VI’s Spanish cardinals firmly opposing the French party, led by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, the pope’s inveterate enemy, and those loyal to Milan, notably Ascanio Sforza. Alexander VI was even approached by one of della Rovere’s supporters, who threatened him bluntly that if he did not agree to the crowning of Charles VIII as king of Naples, it would no doubt become necessary to summon a council to investigate the charge that the pope had been guilty of simony in securing his election to high office. Whether or not persuaded by this threat, Alexander VI was induced to agree that Charles VIII should be crowned in Naples when the French army entered the city.
The issue of crowning Alfonso II as king of Naples was discussed at length in a secret consistory that lasted eight hours; it was finally agreed that the pope’s nephew, the cardinal of Monreale, would be appointed legate to Naples and would go there to ‘anoint and crown’ Alfonso as king. Two days later Burchard himself left for Naples to make the necessary preparations; orders for the reception of the legate, for the carrying of the baldachin, the itinerary to be followed for the cardinal of Monreale’s entry into Naples, and his procession to the cathedral were all listed by the
methodical master of ceremonies, together with ‘the roles of the legate and the King on the day of the coronation.’
On April 30 Burchard had an audience with Alfonso II in order to explain to him the details of the ceremony and to fix the date, which was to be May 8, chosen by the king because it was the Feast of the Ascension.
The day before the coronation, in grateful thanks to Alexander VI for his support, Alfonso II announced his gifts to the pope’s children. Cesare was given lucrative Neapolitan benefices; Juan was to get fiefs and the offer of 33,000 ducats a year to serve as a condottiere for Naples; Jofrè was given six Neapolitan fiefs, worth 4,000 ducats a year, including the prestigious title of Prince of Squillace, and the king invested him as a knight of the royal chivalric Order of the Ermine. He also ratified the marriage contract between his illegitimate daughter, Sancia of Aragon, and the twelve-year-old Jofrè, who, as Prince of Squillace, carried the crown during the coronation ceremony.
Three days later, as rain cascaded down in torrents outside, Jofrè and Sancia were married in the chapel of Castel Nuovo. After the wedding banquet, the couple were accompanied to their bedchamber, ‘where their bed had been prepared,’ reported Burchard.
The legate and the King remained waiting outside; the newly-weds were now undressed by maids-of-honour and placed together in the bed, the groom on the right of the bride. When the two, now naked, had been covered with the sheets and blanket, the legate and the King entered. In their presence, the newly-weds were uncovered by the maids-of-honour as far as the navel, or thereabouts, and the groom embraced his
bride without shame. The legate and the King remained there, talking between themselves, for about half an hour before leaving the couple.
Burchard, meanwhile, had taken the opportunity to do some sightseeing around the Bay of Naples, visiting various sites of interest, including the hot springs at Pozzuoli and the sulphur and salt baths at Bagnoli, before leaving Naples with a four-year-old mule, named Idrontina, which he was given as a present by the king, together with 100 gold ducats in gratitude for services rendered.
On July 12 Alexander VI, accompanied by several cardinals, including the nineteen-year-old Cesare, left Rome for Tivoli, where he intended to stay a few days in order to escape the stifling summer heat and to attend a meeting with Alfonso II at the nearby fortress of Vicovaro, a castle belonging to Virginio Orsini, one of the condottieri captains fighting with the Neapolitan army. They discussed at length the measures that would be needed for the defence of Naples against the French. A plan of action was agreed upon; but, before it could be put into operation, an immense French army, thirty thousand strong with forty powerful cannons, under the personal command of Charles VIII, crossed the Alps in early September and started its long march south.
In Rome Alexander VI’s open alliance with Naples and Spain made life very uncomfortable for the supporters of Milan and France, not least in the college. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere had fled to France in April; Cardinal Ascanio Sforza left at the end of June. With the plague raging, the celebrations for the anniversaries of Innocent VIII’s death and of Alexander VI’s accession were both cancelled, adding to the pall of dread that hung over the city,
and which grew daily as news bulletins of Charles VIII’s slow but relentless approach were delivered. There had been a moment of hope soon after the French crossed the Alps when it was learned that Charles VIII had taken to his bed in Asti, suffering from smallpox; but the moment was brief, and the king soon recovered enough to continue on his way.
Guicciardini recorded many signs and portents of impending doom that were seen at about this time:
In Puglia one night three suns were seen in the sky, surrounded by clouds and accompanied by terrifying thunder and lightning. In the territory of Arezzo huge numbers of armed soldiers riding enormous steeds were seen for many days passing across the sky with a terrible clash of trumpets and drums. All over Italy holy images and statues were seen to sweat and everywhere monstrous babies and animals were born . . . whence the people were filled with unbelievable dread, frightened as they already were by the reputation of French power.
The French troops met with little opposition; it was said that they conquered Italy with the bits of chalk that the quartermasters used in order to mark the doors of the houses they occupied on their march south. Certainly the army was one of the most powerful ever assembled, and it was ‘provisioned by a large quantity of artillery,’ wrote Guicciardini, ‘of a type never before seen in Italy.’ The French had developed new weapons: ‘These were called cannon and they used iron cannonballs instead of stone, as before, and this new shot was considerably larger and heavier than that previously deployed.’ Not only were they more powerful than anything
seen before; they were also more manoeuvrable; the massive cannons were transported to Italy by ship and unloaded in the harbour at Genoa, where they were loaded onto specially made gun carriages. ‘This artillery,’ concluded Guicciardini, ‘made Charles VIII’s army formidable.’
After outflanking the weak resistance of the Neapolitan forces in the Romagna and routing the Neapolitan fleet at Rapallo, they crossed the Apennines in October and seized the fortress of Sarzana, one of Florence’s key border defences. Alexander VI appointed the cardinal of Siena, Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, as legate to Charles VIII to negotiate, but Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who had joined the French camp, persuaded the king not to meet him.
On November 17 Charles VIII entered Florence in triumph, to the wild cheers of the fickle populace, for whom the arrival of the French army had been the catalyst that had enabled the expulsion of the detested Piero de’ Medici, who had arrogantly exercised his authority in the city since the death of his father, Lorenzo il Magnifico, two years earlier. After signing an alliance with Florence’s new republican government on November 26, Charles VIII and his troops continued their march south, sacking and pillaging the Tuscan countryside as they went.